In the world of capital ‘d’ Design, it’s easy – easier than most would like to admit – to experience an itchy feeling of not belonging, whether you’re at a scene-y event, experiencing FOMO on Instagram or realising that the chair you’re coveting has a rent-level price tag.
Lin Tyrpien and Jenny Nguyen at Lyle Gallery
Even so-called ‘Insiders’ (designers, gallerists, and, yes, Wallpaper* editors) can succumb to the same feelings. That irony was not lost on gallery owner Lin Tyrpien and design advocate Jenny Nguyen.
‘Even if you’ve been working in an industry for years and years, sometimes you still feel like an outsider,’ says Nguyen, who founded the PR company Hello Human in 2020. ‘But when you find your people that share that feeling and connect and are vulnerable with each other, you create your own community. Then you become an insider.’
Tanuvi Hegde’s chair with a ball bearing in the armrest as a fidget tool
That idea planted the seed for ‘Outside/In,’ a new show the duo has co-curated at Tyrpien’s downtown Manhattan exhibition space, Lyle Gallery. The dozen designers and makers on display vary in their mediums, subject matter, nationality and career longevity, but are all connected by their sense of working on the periphery of the design scene.
‘Both of our respective businesses are heavily focused on representing the underrepresented,’ Nguyen says. ‘It made a lot of sense to come together and give a platform to designers that might not have ever shown in the US, or might not have the access to present in a gallery.’
Side table by Salù Iwadi Studio
The works on display were selected through an open call on Instagram. Some 200 artists, designers and makers responded, among them recently graduated students and international practices. The curators were especially drawn to work with strong narratives. ‘The prompt had to resonate with the designers, but the response had to resonate with us,’ Nguyen explains.
‘It's so nice because you get out of your echo chamber,’ adds Tyrpien. ‘We easily could have come together and hand-picked people we knew.’
The resulting show consists of more than a dozen works of furniture, ceramics, textiles, and light fixtures, all of which address the sense of working on the fringes in a unique way, whether that’s dealing with the body, the mind or the experience of being human.
Tanuvi Hegde’s work, for example, deals with anxiety. A recent graduate from the Savannah College of Art & Design’s furniture design programme, she contributed an elegant cherry wood chair that contains a steel ball bearing in the armrest that can be rolled, like a pinball, from one side of the chair to the other to counter fidgeting.
Candelabra by Clarissa Guzman of Platform Studio
Other submissions focus on the body, like that of Swati Jain of the New York studio Unown Space, who contributed a gossamer red tapestry embroidered with electronic wiring and an abstract human silhouette.
Soft-Geometry, a more established LA firm founded by Utharaa Zacharias and Palaash Chaudhar, contributed ‘Long Hair’ sconces, which resemble cascading braids, in homage to the intimate family ritual of braiding hair in their Indian household.
Some works focus on culture memory, like Clarissa Guzman of Platform Studio’s geometric clay candelabra, which invokes mesoamerican motifs, brutalism, and her Catholic upbringing.
Salù Iwadi Studio, founded by architect Toluwalase Rufai and brand strategist Sandia Nassila just two years ago between Senegal and Nigeria, has two round side tables in the show. Each has a top carved with swirling grooves and spiny timber protrusions, a reference to the mesmerising Zangbeto masquerade in Benin.
‘Long Hair’ sconce by Soft-Geometry
Interestingly the majority of the participants identify as women, a fact that feels more than coincidental considering women make up just 26 per cent of the furniture manufacturing workforce and an even smaller percentage of company leadership positions.
Still, being an outsider ‘is a very complicated idea’, says Nguyen. Even Tyrpien, who founded Lyle Gallery with her wife just a year ago, feels it deeply. ‘In a weird way, I feel like I shouldn’t even be doing this,’ she says.
By poking that nerve, though, the pair hope they create their own ever-expanding network of insiders – and it’s a club we’d gladly be a part of.
'Outside/In' is on view from 13 May to 1 June 2025 at Lyle Gallery
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